Death and the Maiden mb-20

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘I will get you a guide book,’ he said. ‘It will save you the trouble of visiting the places of interest, and will last you longer than a novel.’

  Miss Carmody, to whom these uses of a guide book had not previously occurred, looked somewhat surprised. Mrs Bradley cackled, and Crete observed that Edris sometimes had very good ideas. She added that she had had no intention whatsoever of visiting the places of interest, but that one should be informed upon matters of cultural and historic importance, and that a guide book would be most welcome.

  Upon this note of conjugal understanding and felicity, husband and wife went up to dress for dinner, and Connie, who did not think much of the walk she had had that afternoon, went out, as she said, to stretch her legs. Miss Carmody, with a grateful sigh, sat down beside Mrs Bradley.

  ‘Well, what do you make of Edris and Crete?’ she enquired.

  ‘They seem well matched,’ replied Mrs Bradley thoughtfully. This comment seemed to cause Miss Carmody some surprise. ‘Will they enjoy their stay in England, do you think?’ Mrs Bradley went on.

  ‘It is not a stay. It is permanent,’ Miss Carmody replied. She hesitated, and then added, ‘Edris has retired from his banana plantation, although not as comfortably, I believe, as he had hoped. He has had losses, I understand, and then I suppose trade must have suffered somewhat during the war. I believe they have not much to live on, and as I believe they propose to live on me, that will not be much for them, either.’

  Politeness forbade Mrs Bradley to ask more, and she turned the conversation on to Connie, who seemed, she said, an interesting child. Certainly Connie’s ill-humour, which had been most marked since the advent of the Tidsons, seemed to have disappeared. Miss Carmody commented on this, and added that she was very fond of Connie.

  ‘She is my cousin’s child. I took her for his sake, but I keep her now for my own,’ she said with apparent sincerity.

  Mrs Bradley understood from this that Miss Carmody supported Connie, and she was surprised that so independent-seeming a girl should be content to live on an aunt past middle age.

  ‘She is technically illegitimate,’ said Miss Carmody, as though she were explaining away Mrs Bradley’s uncharitable thoughts. ‘A very sad case. My cousin – Arthur Preece-Harvard, you know – was very deeply in love with Connie’s mother. There was no dishonour attached. They intended to marry. Connie is the first-fruits of impatience.’

  ‘And the mother?’ Mrs Bradley enquired, perceiving that Miss Carmody wished to develop the conversation.

  ‘A sweet, sweet girl,’ said Miss Carmody. ‘She died, I am sorry to say, in giving birth to Connie. Arthur was broken-hearted for a time, and, of course, the whole thing has made life hard for the child. I wish she got on with Edris better. They dislike one another very much. It is so awkward at times. Of course, Connie has suffered great hardship and some injustice. It has made her rather bitter, I’m afraid. I do what I can, but, of course, it isn’t what she was used to. It is very wrong to treat a child unfairly.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mrs Bradley; and the thoughts engendered by this conversation lasted her all the time that she was dressing.

  The party met for cocktails at half-past six, and spent a pleasant time until dinner, which was at seven. Mr Tidson, who, from his own account, had spent a delightful afternoon in roving all over the town from the Westgate to the river bridge, and from Hyde Abbey gateway to the farthest boundary of St Mary’s College, invited Mrs Bradley to sit at their table for the meal, but she pleaded that there were papers she proposed to study during dinner, and produced an impressive brief-case which did, indeed, contain papers of a sort, although not anything of immediate or first-rate importance.

  Mr Tidson led the way into the dining-room, made a pleasant remark to the waitress, pulled Mrs Bradley’s chair out for her and even, rather officiously, cleared a space beside her plate for her documents. Then he saw his own party seated, flipped open his table napkin, said ‘Ha! Oxtail soup!’ and called boisterously for the wine list. There was no doubt that he was in great holiday spirits, and there was no doubt, either, thought Mrs Bradley, that the wine would appear in due course on Miss Carmody’s bill.

  ‘You are enjoying Winchester, sir?’ asked the waitress, when she came to bring the bottle and change the plates.

  ‘Winchester,’ declared Mr Tidson, ‘is the queen of cities. And you, my dear, are the queen of Winchester.’

  ‘My home’s in Southampton,’ said the girl, registering a theory that Mr Tidson was an old sport but would bear watching. Anecdotes about Southampton, Liverpool and Bristol, from all of which his banana boats had sailed, then lasted Mr Tidson until coffee, and the waitress decided that she was wrong, and that the poor old bloke was harmless after all, thus confirming her first impression of him.

  ‘I shall hope,’ he said, changing the conversation when all five of them were seated in the lounge after dinner, ‘to have your company, Mrs Bradley, in my exploration of the city and its environs. I am, as you may imagine, a little out of touch with details of English architecture after so long a sojourn abroad. Would you care to accompany me tomorrow, perhaps, or the next day?’

  ‘It would give me great pleasure,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Shall we say to-morrow afternoon? And where would you like to go?’

  ‘I should like to go to Alresford,’ Mr Tidson replied, ‘but as my nymph is not there I shall postpone my visit in her honour, and we will walk as far as Shawford, if you are willing.’

  ‘Alresford?’ said Connie, startled. ‘Oh, but you can’t go there!’

  ‘That is what I said,’ replied Mr Tidson. ‘Moreover, I did not address the remark to you!’

  Chapter Three

  ‘Dr Thorne promised to come also but was prevented by being obliged to attend some Patients.’

  * * *

  ‘Soon after breakfast I went out a fishing by myself, into Wilmots Orchard as it is called and stayed there till Dinner time near 3 o’clock had very good sport, caught 3 fine Trout, the largest about 1pd and 1/4, and 4 fine Eels . . .’

  Diary of a Country Parson: the REVEREND

  JAMES WOODFORDE, Vol. 3, 1788–1792.

  Edited by JOHN BERESFORD.

  AS IT happened, Mrs Bradley spent only two days in Winchester, or, rather, two parts of days, for she was recalled by telegram on the Tuesday afternoon to attend an ex-seaman who had been ordered psychiatric treatment for shock following some bad burns.

  Mr Tidson, therefore, continued his tour of Winchester and the neighbourhood alone, for his wife still declared that she preferred a chair in the sun-lounge to walking or sightseeing, and Miss Carmody and Connie refused to have anything to do with fishing.

  Mr Tidson had announced himself to be a devoted and persistent angler, and argued that, besides this, the troutrod in his hand would cloak the gravity of his true quest, his search for the naiad, for it gave a screen, and seemed to provide a reason, for his wadings and mud-larkings across water-meadows intersected by ditches, brooks, tributary streams and carriers, and for his getting dirty and wet.

  A wet and muddy angler was almost an object of nature, he observed, but a naiad-hunter in similar plight might have been regarded askance, particularly as the quickest way back to the hotel lay across the Cathedral Close. He therefore purchased a green-heart rod and some tackle, and set about acquiring tickets for the local waters.

  His first action after lunch was to see Mrs Bradley off. His second was to walk to the offices of the County newspaper and enquire whether anything more had been added to the first report of the naiad. Rather to his annoyance, Miss Carmody insisted upon going there with him. Connie, whom he had attempted to persuade, refused to be seen about with him, an announcement which she made in the most offensive tone of which she was capable. She then went off to the bus station and left Mr Tidson and Miss Carmody to walk to the office of the newspaper.

  The staff could tell them no more. They cast polite doubts upon the authenticity of the letter and also declared that i
t was unusual for ladies to bathe in the open river so near the Cathedral precincts. The story of the naiad, they thought, had been invented to provide a silly-season sensation, or possibly to provoke a newspaper correspondence. It had not appeared in any of the local papers, although a local resident had sent them a cutting.

  They had not, however, troubled to get in touch with the sender of the letter. They thought that he must have been someone staying in Winchester on holiday who had found the place quiet – some people did – and had tried to create a diversion in the form of a stupid hoax.

  Miss Carmody listened with critical attention, putting in a word here and there. She confided to Connie, upon her return to the Domus, that she still found herself slightly worried. She could not forget that Mr Tidson had been out of England for a great many years, and, in any case, had no sense of humour, and she feared lest his researches should lead him into difficulties. She referred afresh to the instinct which had caused her to ask Mrs Bradley to come to Winchester, and said soberly that she would have been glad of the continued support and comfort of her presence.

  Connie, who meant to go to Andover, where she had friends, listened with considerable impatience, for she knew she would miss the bus if she stayed too long. She did, in fact, miss it, much to her annoyance, for there was no other which fitted in with the hotel meals, and this fact caused her to postpone her outing and behave rather sulkily in consequence.

  Miss Carmody, still perturbed, got up at six the next morning and went out by herself for a walk. She crossed the High Street and stood for a moment beside the Butter Cross before she passed beneath an archway which led across the green to the Cathedral.

  Except for a postman she saw nobody as she left the flying buttresses of the south wall of the Cathedral behind her and crossed the silent and beautiful Close. She paused, as she had paused in years gone by, to admire the sixteenth-century houses near Kings Gate, and then she walked under the arches of the gate itself, with the Church of St Swithun athwart it, and turned down College Street towards the river.

  She passed the College booksellers’ and the house in which Jane Austen died, and admired, on the other side of the road, the grass-plot and rambler roses of the outside wall of the Close. The beautiful little garden was denuded now of its railings, which had all gone for wartime scrap and had not been replaced, but it retained its ancient well, and its tall and brilliant flowers almost hid the stone wall from view.

  At the bottom of the street a loose, broad path, a white-painted wicket gate and an avenue of limes led on to the open water-meadows through which ran the main stream of Itchen and those other clear chalk-streams, occasionally green with weed and in places deceptively deep, beside which she, Connie and Mrs Bradley had walked to St Cross on the first afternoon of their stay; and as she walked between streams in that fresh, cold, early morning air, and crossed a two-plank bridge above a six-foot pool, and lingered awhile to look southwards towards Saint Cross and then up at the grove of trees on Saint Catherine’s brow, it began to seem, she confessed to Crete and Connie when she returned, as though there might be something in the letter after all, and that the surprising thing might be, not the sight of the naiad, but the failure to be able to see her. The time, the place and the loved one could so easily be in confluence, she thought.

  She added, in exalted mood, that, although no more willing to believe the writer of the letter than she had been when she was in London, she was now prepared to extend to him the freedom of poets’ licence, this for the excellent reason that Truth, as Tagore has said, in her dress of fiction moves with ease.

  Crete, obviously bored with all these rhapsodies, went on with her embroidery and said nothing. Connie had not quite forgiven her aunt for the loss of the Andover outing, and would not encourage the conversation by taking part in it. In fact, to her aunt’s disappointment, she remained sulky, and was rather disagreeable.

  The rest of the day passed calmly, but immediately after dinner Mr Tidson left his wife in the lounge with the guide book and some coffee, saw that Miss Carmody and Connie were playing two-handed whist, and went forth, rod in hand, at eight o’clock, ostensibly to try his luck at the evening rise of the trout, but really, he told the others, to lie in wait for his shyer quarry, the naiad.

  At just after half-past ten he returned, wet through – in fact, soaked to the skin – and in high excitement. His wife, who was inclined to be cross with him for spoiling his suit and shoes, listened with more than her usual attentiveness. Miss Carmody, who had soon given up the whist and gone out to look at the Cathedral by moonlight, had just returned, but Connie, who had decided that the West Front was rather ugly, had left her aunt and gone off for an evening stroll.

  Mr Tidson, stuttering a little, declared that he thought he might have caught a glimpse of the naiad. He had been as far as the St Cross water, and, observing that, so far as he could make out in the fading light, spinners were falling on the water, although he could not see what kind, he had tried the evening rise with a fisherman’s curse, but had had no luck at all.

  Returning, he had walked to the plank bridge on which Miss Carmody, it transpired, had stood that very morning, and was aware of something glimmering. The stream bent, and as he leaned over the rail of the bridge to try to see round the bend, he lost his balance and fell into the swift-running water. Thence, garlanded with cresses and embellished by a scrased arm and hand (from the gravel at the bottom of the river), he had scrambled on to the bank, where, fortunately, he had left his rod and tackle. He believed himself to have suffered no ill effects except the inconvenience of having to squeeze the water out of his clothes and empty it out of his shoes, and he described, with some gusto, his return in waterlogged discomfort to the hotel.

  ‘Fortunately,’ he concluded, ‘no one saw me fall in, otherwise I should have felt extremely foolish. But I might very easily have been drowned. I am safe, so there is no need to worry. Unfortunately, if it was the naiad I saw, I am afraid I may have frightened her away.’

  ‘And a good thing, too!’ said Connie, who had appeared in the vestibule whilst he was talking, and had heard him with growing irritation. ‘For goodness’ sake! You and your naiad, Uncle Edris! I hope you’ve said goodnight to her, that’s all! If not, you had better go and do it!’

  ‘I shall not go out again this evening. I shall go first thing in the morning,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘To-night I should hardly descry her, but to-morrow I can look for any traces she leaves on the bank.’

  ‘The only things that leave traces on the bank are cows and rabbits,’ said Connie, with vulgar impatience. ‘You’d much better stay in bed. Don’t you think so, Aunt Prissie? Still, I’m getting up early myself. Do you want me to call you?’

  Mr Tidson did get up early and go out. He went out at just before five and returned to an eight o’clock breakfast.

  ‘Ah, porridge!’ said he, in great good-humour. He certainly seemed none the worse for his ducking of the previous night.

  ‘And coffee! Splendid! Well, I saw nothing more of my naiad, and nothing of Connie, who very kindly knocked on my door, but, all the same—’

  ‘Bacon and fried potatoes to follow, sir,’ said the waitress, who was still taking a protective interest in him, an attitude to which he was accustomed. ‘Or scrambled egg on toast.’

  ‘Dried egg?’ demanded Mr Tidson.

  ‘Yes, sir, I am afraid so.’

  ‘Awful stuff,’ said Connie, who had just come in.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Mr Tidson. ‘I like these scientists’ tricks! Scrambled egg on toast by all means, my dear. Prissie,’ he added, as the waitress went away, ‘it was almost certainly the naiad. You must accompany me at some convenient time. I will point out to you where I saw her!’

  He made a hearty breakfast, and, after it, he suggested that Crete might like to go with him to the Cathedral.

  ‘Whatever for?’ asked his wife, who kept her church-goings for Sundays and not always then.

  ‘They are doing Stanf
ord in F, dear.’

  ‘Oh, well, if you really want to go, I suppose we could. I imagine one should see the Cathedral.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear. I really do want to go. I must not miss Stanford in F. An amusing key.’ He began a contented humming.

  It was extraordinary, thought Miss Carmody, putting on a suitable hat and picking up her gloves, how often the meek little man had his own way, even with Crete, who was selfish and hard. Possibly Crete mothered him, she thought. He was, in some matters, very childish. He might also have a child’s capacity for lying, she decided, turning over in her mind his account of his evening’s adventure, and his reiteration that he had actually seen the naiad.

  Mr Tidson skipped up the stairs as soon as breakfast was over, and came down with a sandal in his already gloved hand. He said the naiad had left it on the bank. Connie refused to touch it, and remarked that if he supposed that the muddy and battered object he was offering for commendation had ever been on any except a human foot – and a boy’s at that – he was an even sillier old man than she had supposed. She added that, supposing there might be such a pagan creature as a naiad, she would certainly not wear a leather sandal. To Miss Carmody’s consternation, she sounded both angry and frightened, and continued, after all necessity to do so was over, to scold her uncle pettishly.

  Mr Tidson, who disliked to be called a silly old man, stopped listening, stuck out his bottom lip, refused to speak to them, and, on his way to the High Street, wedged the sandal among the rubbish already on a dustman’s cart. Then he wiped his gloved hands on his handkerchief, and went on to hear Stanford in F.

  Chapter Four

  ‘All this while, therefore, we are but upon a defensive warre, and that is but a doubtful state.’

  JOHN DONNE (Devotions XIX)

  MRS BRADLEY was both pleasantly and unpleasantly preoccupied during the drive back to London. Her thoughts were engaged by Mr Tidson, Crete and Connie, and, to an even greater degree, perhaps, by the somewhat unfortunate Miss Carmody. Life, she reflected, is rich in situations which even the talking-picture world would regard with superstitious mistrust, and the Carmody household, comprising, as it did, the fantastic Mr Tidson, the astoundingly beautiful Crete, the discontented Connie and her troubled, respectable aunt, appeared to have something more in common with the surreal than with the real.